Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 7 December 1911, Page 2465

Current Topics

■ $ . Controversial Methods ♦ Evidently all’s fair in love and war —and local option controversy. From the way in which each side is belaboring the other in the advertising columns of the daily press one would suppose that both parties have borrowed their working formula from David Harum ; ‘ Do unto the other fellow, as you think the other fellow is going to do unto you, and do it first.’ Until after December 7 charity will have to be content with a very back seat. A Socialist Tragedy The following cable from Paris appeared in last week’s dailies : ‘ The well-known Socialist, Paul Lafargue, and his wife committed suicide. Madame Lafargue was a daughter of Karl Marx. Laf argue was threatened with paralysis. This is the second daughter of the famous Karl Marx that has committed suicide.’ argue was the author of Social and Philosophical Studies, which was translated by Chas. IT. Kerr, an American Socialist, and a thorough-going advocate of the doctrine of free-love. The other daughter of Karl Marx here referred toMiss Eleanor Marx —was also an ardent advocate of free-love. In the Chicago Tribune of November 14, 1906, she is reported as saying: ‘ Love is the only recognised marriage in Socialism, consequently no bonds of any kind would be required. Divorce would be impossible, as there would be nothing to divorce, for when love ceased, separation would naturally ensue.’ The way in which the theory works out in actual practice is painfully illustrated in Miss Marx’s tragic life story. This exceptionally talented woman fell in love with Dr. Edward Aveling, who gained an international reputation by translating Marx’s Capital into English. He, too, was an atheist and a believer in free-love. With the full knowledge of Marx and the.other Socialist leaders, the pair lived together as husband and wife, and worked together in the Socialist movement. In 1886 and 1887 they made a lecturing tour in the United States, Miss Marx travelling as Mrs. Aveling, though her companion had at that time an invalid wife in London. But it came to pass in course of time that Aveling’s love grew cold ; and Mrs. Caroline Corbin relates in Labor and Capital , April, 1903. that on the death of his legal wife in London, Aveling married another woman and discarded Miss Marx. Her fondness remaining unabated, the freelove wife, disgusted with the world, committed suicide. The story is a 'melancholy illustration of the domestic shipwreck which is almost sure to follow when the religious and legal sanctions which safeguard marriage are thrown to the winds. The Presbyterian Assembly and * Ne Temere’ Last week a letter appeared in the Otago Daily Times from the Rev. R. Wood by way of answer to our previous communication regarding the Presbyterian Assembly and Ne Temere. The following reply, which appeared in the Daily Times of Thursday, gives a sufficient indication of the nature of Mr.. Wood’s communication : ‘ —The Rev. Robert Wood has always shown such kindly consideration for the susceptibilities of Catholics—attacking them, as he does, with the utmost bitterness on every possible and impossible occasion I am naturally pained at having hurt his feelings by the plainness of speech which I employed towards his fidus Achates, the Rev. Dr. Gibb. I can only plead justification on the facts. I judged Dr. Gibb by his performances at the Assembly, as reported in the daily press. Here they are : He aroused ‘ a chorus of indignant denials ’ by declaring that those who—unlike himself-administered baptism to children whose parents were imperfectly instructed in the ordinance were ‘ reducing the sacrament to a farce ’ and by telling themvery uncouthly, as it strikes —that ‘ they might as well sprinkle water in a dog’s face.’ Later,

his ‘ spirit waxed hot within him ’ because seventy of his brethren had the temerity to vote against him, and he politely told them they ‘ had not a ghost of a notion what they were doing.’ Next, he is accused by one of the brethren of trying to ‘ jockey ’ the house. Then he is howled down and refused a!bearingthe most emphatic way open to the Assembly of protesting against attempted bluster. Finally, he is charged by the Moderator with making a reference ‘ that was anything but parliamentary ’; and the Assembly declines to listen to another word from him until he withdraws the offensive statement. On the top of all this, in the Ne Teinere discussion, he talked what ‘Givis’ calls ‘ a plenitude of inflated rubbish,’ and declaimed most valiantly about ‘ not submitting ’ to some imaginary ‘ servitude ’ which nobody in the world wanted him to submit to. That is Dr. Gibb as pictured in the press reports from day to day; and in the light of such a record it will probably be admitted that my description of him was sufficiently near the mark. If in any way it did him less than justice it is probably because Dr, Gibb did himself less than justice in the overbearing attitude which he so consistently adopted towards his brethren. * I pass by without comment Mr. Wood’s little dissertation on the subject of manners. A lecture on manners from the author of the ‘R. W. ’ articles may always, quite safely, be regarded as a joke. Nor need the very much over-worked McCann case detain us long. Mr. Wood had said that the McCann story ‘ had never been shattered ’ —by which 1 understood him to imply that there was only one side, and that the Mrs. McCann side, to the story. I pointed out, in reply, that the other side had been presented on the floor of the House of Commons by (among others) Mr. J. Devlin, who submitted written statements from McCann and from/the three priests in the district in emphatic contradiction to the version given by Mrs. McCann. Mr. Wood declines to believe these witnesses; I, on the other hand, most certainly decline to believe the volcanic Mr. Corkey, who, to judge by the quoted specimen of vitriolic eloquence with which Mr. Wood has favored us and by other hot-head utterances of his which lie before me, would be manifestly the last person in the world to go to for a judicial, impartial, and unexaggerated statement of . the facts. I am in a position to fill quite as much of your valuable space as you are likely to be willing to allow with quotations from the written statements of McCann and the priests in the district ; but so long as neither of us can regard the testimony of, the other side as trustworthy, the mere pitting of witness against witness is not likely to bring us very much ‘ forrarder.’ Personally, I entirely agree with the sane dictum of the editor of the British Weekly on the subject. ‘lf we understand rightly,’ says the great Protestant organ, ‘ the Roman Catholics ask that the priest should be publicly named so that he may commence an action for libel in which all the facts will be brought out. We humbly submit that this is the only satisfactory solution of the difficulty. At any rate, it is in a court of law where evidence can be taken, and where statements can be sifted that the truth is most likely to be arrived at.’ The Orange exploiters of Mrs. McCann were given the opportunity of putting the matter to the test in this way by repeated challenges from Mr. Devlin to publicly name the priest. The challenge was not taken up; and so long as the retailers a of the story are afraid to face the music in this, the only way of finally settling the controversy, the no-Popery fireworks with which they attempt to cover their retreat will be taken for, what they are mere sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ •xIt will not escape the notice of your readers that Mr. Wood has made not the faintest attempt to face the other issues raised in my reply to the misstatements made in the Assembly discussion on Ne Temere. (1) I challenged him to publicly name the Canterbury priest who, he alleged, had used the decree as an instrument of ‘ conversion by coercion ’—but he is discreetly silent on the subject. When a man makes slanderous state-

ments, and then, on being challenged, fails to stand up to them, an intelligent public will have little difficulty in sizing up the. situation. (2) He makes no further pretence that the exemption of Germany from the present operation of the decree was due to ‘ Kaiser Wilhelm and his warriors.’ On the contrary, he himself shows that some few other districts, with no particularly formidable warriors behind them, are placed on precisely the same footing as Germany in this respect. (3) He has made no attempt—and can make no attempt —to deny that in this decree the Pope was legislating for his own spiritual children, and that any outsiders who bring themselves within its scope do so freely and voluntarily, of their own motion, and entirely against the Pope’s desire in the matter. (4) He very wisely * makes no effort to defend the indescribable absurdity of Presbyterian ministers perambulating the countryfor Mr. Wood has addressed several meetings in Canterbury on the —crying for Government ‘ protection ’ against a decree which already has no legal force and whose scope, so far as New Zealand is concerned, is to regulate the conditions of marriage of a handful of Catholics. To have clearly established the Catholic position on these four points — even Mr. Wood’s powers of contradictionis itself sufficient, from my side of the question, to have made this controversy worth while, * Apart from the reference to the McCann case, the only other point in Mr. Wood’s letter relevant to Ne Temere is his comments on the fact that in Germany and one or two smaller districts the same conditions are not, as yet, required for the celebration of a valid marriage as are imposed in the rest of Catholic Christendom. He is astonished (or affects to be astonished) that a Catholic disciplinary decree on marriage should in any way vary, for special reasons or to suit' special circumstances, and with his wonted fairness and temperateness he describes such variation as ‘ morally monstrous’ and as making ‘the moral law of God re- : garding marriage a matter of geography and climate.’ It should be obvious to a very ordinary intelligence that if the Church has the right to legislate at all she has the right to determine when, where, and under what conditions, her legislation shall take effect. It should be almost equally obvious that the moral law of God is in no way varied or sought to be varied by the Ne Temere. decree. The moral law of God regarding marriage declares that a valid marriage contract * is : i binding in conscience. But the Divine Law nowhere lays down the external forms and conditionse.g., the character and number of the witnesses, the minimum ;/ age of the parties, the formula to be employed, etc., — which are requisite to make the contract' valid. These have been left to a properly constituted authority—and, for Catholics, that authority is the Catholic Church. It is these and these alone — the external forms and conditions requisite to make the contract valid for Catholics—which are regulated by Ne Temere, the ‘ moral law of God regarding marriage ’ remaining unaffected. * But the point to which I wish to specially draw attention in this letter is the fact that the ‘ morally monstrous ’ juggling with ‘ the law of God regarding marriage/ with which he has so vehemently charged the Catholic Church is the very thing of which the Church of which Mr. Wood is a minister has been conspicuously guilty. In the varying legislation of the Presbyterian Church regarding marriage with a deceased wife’s sister we have a peculiarly glaring example, not of a mere disciplinary decree, but of a making and unmaking, promulgating and revoking, of the law of God.’ The Westminster Confession of Faith (Chap, xxiv., s. 4) not only condemns such marriages as invalid, but adds —‘ nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man, or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together as man and wife.’ That was ‘ the law of God ’ for Presbyterians throughout New Zealand up till the year 1883. In 7 that year, however, as the result of an overture from the Timaru Presbytery, and out of regard to the scruples of ‘ those office-bearers and members who had entered

into the prohibited relationship or contemplated doing so/ the Northern Presbyterian Churchas it was commonly called—decided not to adhere to what it had hitherto laid down as ‘ the law of God ’ on the subject, but to ‘ leave the whole. matter an open question.’ Thus,''one fine day in 1883, marriages which before had been not only invalid but, ‘ incestuous,’ suddenly ceased, by Presbyterian legislation, to be contrary to ‘ the law of God,’ and became true and honorable marriages. But this only applied to marriages north of the Waitaki. The Presbyterian Church of Otago still adhered to ‘ the law of God ’ as set forth in the Westminster Confession; and we had the ‘ morally monstrous’ condition of affairs— apply Mr. Wood’s expression— which while a marriage with a deceased wife’s sister celebrated in Timaru was a perfectly true and valid and honorable marriage, the very same union celebrated in Oamaru was not only invalid but ‘ incestuous/ the parties living in concubinage, and the children being, in Mr. Wood’s gentle phrase, ‘ bastards.’ This continued for a number of years, until at length the Presbyterian Church of Otago fell into line with the Northern Church so that to-day unions which up till 1883 had been sternly forbidden as odious, and ‘ incestuous/ and no marriages at all, are now throughout Presbyterian New Zealand true and honorable marriages. Nor is this all. The Confession of Faith enactment is still the law of the Presbyterian Churches in —though ministers have been relieved from fears of legal process should they officiate at such marriagesso that we have what Mr. Wood would call the ‘ morally monstrous ’ spectacle of marriages which the Presbyterian Church regards as good and valid in New Zealand, being condemned by that same church as invalid and abominable and ‘ incestuous ’ in Scotland. * It will be interesting to see what defence your correspondent will make against this very serious indictment. In the meantime, perhaps, I may be permitted to remind him of the strong denunciation which has been pronounced by very high authority against those who virulently declaim against the mote which they are so ready to see in their brother’s eye, whilst they blindfold themselves to the beam that is in their own. It is the right and the duty of the Presbyterian minister —as of the Catholic priestto impress upon his people the danger and unwisdom and general misery of mixed marriages. In view, however, of the facts I have just outlined, those ministers who have any sense of consistency should feel themselves forever estopped from any. further denunciation of Ne Temere —at least in respect to seeming anomalies of ‘ geography and climate.’ — am, etc., Editor N.Z. Tablet.’ December 2.